Older Women Turn To Younger Men For Romance

Women over 30 outnumber men their own age, according to an article in the August issue of Harper`s Bazaar. But some very famous older women have opted for men five, 10 or even 20 years their junior.

A decade ago it was news when Dinah Shore had a four-year romance with Burt Reynolds, 18 years younger.

Now, the famous women who have pulled a role reversal on the old May- December combination include Mary Tyler Moore, Joan Collins, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Slick, Goldie Hawn, Raquel Welch, Ursula Andress, Miriam Makeba, Juliet Mills and Estelle Parsons.

The statistical reasons are there. For women over 30 there are not enough men of suitable age -- two or three years older -- to go around. In addition, most men over 30 are already married, gay or pursuing younger women. Add to that the fact that women who marry men their own age are likely to outlive their husbands and you have the case for younger men.

What was once taboo -- when poet Elizabeth Barrett, at age 40, ran off to Italy with 30-year-old Robert Browning -- is today`s trend. When two California psychologists set out to write a book on the age taboo, they easily found far more older woman-younger man couples than they could interview.

The stereotype of these couples is that of a calculating older woman who wants to control and dominate a younger man searching for Mommy, dragging his unresolved oedipal dilemma behind him like a tattered teddy bear.

Not true in most cases, said Joyce Sunila, author of The New Lovers: Younger Men-Older Women. She said usually the man has real appreciation of a sophisticated, challenging woman. For the woman, it may be the first time she has been treated as an equal.

These relationships often are much more than a sexual fling. Raymond Chandler was married to a woman 18 years his senior for 30 years; Agatha Christie to a man 12 years her junior for 45 years. The ``wealthy and accomplished`` widow Khadija was married for 25 years to a man 15 years younger -- the prophet Muhammad.

Women in these involvements may be escapees from traditional marriage to a domineering man of appropriate age whose ego needed coddling by the self- effacement of a doting wife.

As for younger men, some psychologists say they are rebelling against machismo and their parents` male-dominated marriage. Others say many of them are sons of ``wimps.``

Psychologist Thomas Greening, of Westwood, Calif., speculates they are looking for Dad, not Mommy, and turn to older women for the stability and guidance they failed to get from their fathers.

The problems most often encountered in these matches involve money -- when she has more than he has, or he has less than her former husband.